Lancelot's skin: A foundation for typological interpretation

Abstract

In the Lancelot of the Old French Vulgate Cycle and the Prosa-Lancelot of the Middle High German Lancelot-Gral-Zyklus, the here stands in a typological triangle between Virgil's Aeneas and Christ. Aeneas, founder of Rome, foreshadows Lancelot, protector of King Arthur's realm, who foreshadows Christ, the Savior. Aeneas's descent into Hades compared with Lancelot's journey into the Dolorous Garde and that in turn to Christ's descent into hell illustrates this point. Comparing the portrait of Lancelot to a period portrait of Christ and to a description of Aeneas's lion skin further strengthens this contention. “Good” characters normally are described as having white skin and “evil” characters with black skin, but extremely rarely do characters have brown skin. The color of Aeneas's lion skin is light brown to reddish, Lancelot's skin is a little more intense than the color of the lion skin with an admixture of black in the German, while the skin of Christ is light brown mixed with red and deepened with black, darker still and more intense than the lion skin of Aeneas and the brown skin of Lancelot. The lion as a symbol of Christ and the unusual brown skin link the triad Aeneas-Lancelot-Christ typologically.